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The Whistleblogger

The independent external panel of the United Nations, established by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to explore the issues surrounding the sexual abuse of children by non-UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic last year, has begun its work.

In an atmosphere of intimidation and fear of retaliation, it takes a lot to speak out against powerful chicken corporations. But Perdue contract farmer Rudy Howell is taking a chance and bravely speaking about the lies that Perdue told him and about the harsh reality that chicken farmers face just trying to make ends meet. What they are told when they sign up to become contract farmers doesn’t match reality, and if farmers don’t do exactly what the big chicken companies say, retaliation could very well follow.

Congress is at it again. Mere months after civil liberties and privacy activists were able to stop the reauthorization of some of the worst provisions of the Patriot Act, the Senate may be on the verge of passing a surveillance bill in disguise – CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act.

Oscar, Pulitzer, and Academy Award-winning documentarian Laura Poitras, who told the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in her documentary Citizenfour, has been detained by US Border Patrol at least 50 times, without any legitimate explanation, upon trying to reenter the country. Now, she is fighting back!

From the land Down Under to the U.S. hinterland, whistleblowers are being threatened with prosecution for exposing abuses in both the public and private sectors – a phenomenon that bodes ill for holding authorities accountable and for protecting basic rights to free speech and information.

“The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned US senators that the threat from the Islamic State merits a “debate” about limiting commercial encryption – the linchpin of digital security – despite a growing chorus of technical experts who say that undermining encryption would prove an enormous boon for hackers, cybercriminals, foreign spies and terrorists.”